Wall Street Can Save Us

Wall Street can do it. Wall Street owes us. After all, we’re in a national financial mess because of Wall Street. As SNL’s Oscar Rogers says, it’s time for Wall Street to “fix it!!”
How can Wall Street “fix it?” Merge the US and China.

If Wall Street can take a batch of loans from nannies and strawberry pickers who buy $700,000 houses on $14,000 annual incomes with no down payment and convince the world that the batch is no more risky than US Treasury securities, it can do anything.

A merger would solve our budget problems. Let’s examine the synergies – a fancy word for win-win.
The US needs China to make stuff for it. China needs US consumers to buy the stuff it makes. The US buys a lot of stuff from China. Then China sends the money right back, admittedly as a loan, but it does send it back.
The US hates taxes. China’s national tax burden is lower than the US, finally proving that President Reagan was right – lower taxes are the best way to grow an economy.

US manufacturers like low cost land, lower regulatory restrictions, and cheap labor. China has all that.
China’s economic growth rate is 9%. The United States growth rate has been anemic. Average the two, and we’re probably close to the Fed’s target of 3%.

The Chinese control exchange rates and interest rates. The Fed tries to control those in the US, but the average is probably healthy for both.

Chinese students love science and technology and American students love Chinese food and art. Chinese students make good grades, so US schools would report vast improvements. Chinese students love US universities and US universities give boatloads of PhDs to Chinese students.

US kids like to have sleepovers and Chinese parents don’t let their kids sleepover, but since we’re 9,000 miles apart, that shouldn’t be a problem.

As an accounting professor, I know most people hate accounting. Though the percentage of students majoring in accounting has dropped by more than half in the past 20 years, a large percentage of US accounting students and most new accounting professors are Chinese. Even so, most people think accountants can always make the numbers come out right. Consolidation accounting is very difficult to understand, but the basic idea is that when the same company buys and sells to itself, the amount owed and the amount due cancel each other out.

So, merge the US and China. The US deficit goes POOF! Completely offset by China’s surplus. Hooray for accounting! Maybe we can even shed that image of being boring. TV glamorizes doctors and lawyers, and even bachelors and letter-pickers. Imagine a TV show about accountants. Never mind. But, our time has arrived on the biggest stage of all.

Wall Street is always looking for the next big deal and this would be the mother of big deals.
This is a win-win-win. Everyone gets what they want. Wall Street fees and bonuses will make $100 million bonuses look like chump change. The US budget gets balanced. And China doesn’t have to worry about getting repaid.